Introduction

Abstract

The concept of value is ubiquitous in today’s healthcare landscape. This chapter provides some background on the notion of value in health care and argues that as an industry we lack a shared vernacular for how to talk about value. While resources exist to teach healthcare professionals how to carry out a particular type of value analysis, we need healthcare professionals to understand how to think about value. We will explore the primary perspectives that may be relevant for assessing value, including payers, providers, clinicians, patients, third-party healthcare organizations, and society. Real-world examples will illustrate how different perspectives and definitions of value are relevant for different situations, and advocate for some level of standardization in the framework used to design and conduct value assessments.

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